West Bank

This past month the New York Times devoted over two pages to an investigative report on American Jewish charities that funneled $200 million tax-deductible contributions over the past ten years to West Bank settlements, although such settlement activity is in contradiction to American foreign policy. The legality of this activity depends on legal interpretation, as does all life. Some of this money was used for what appears to be legitimate uses if it were spent in the United States or in Israel proper.

Forty-four years ago, an official of the Israel Government Press Office took me on a tour of the West Bank, which was named by the Jordanians in contrast to Jordan, the East Bank, a few years before the Jordanians were kicked out of the West Bank, and replaced by the Israel Army of occupation. My guide took me to Ben Shemen, a youth village, which is close to the Ben-Gurion Airport. We climbed a tall fire tower. Before us stretched the airport and beyond were the hills that Jordan had occupied.

On-again, off-again peace talks with the Palestinians are on again — for now. That may soon change, as the latter have threatened to halt the talks if Israel does not stop expanding settlements in the West Bank. A decision may come this weekend at an Arab League forum. Israel allowed a 10-month building moratorium to expire last week. But with the talks on again, it may be a bad time to roil the waters. The Israelis may want to reconsider. Wouldn't waiting a few more months be worth it if it helped bring a permanent peace?

Following a recent vote by the Presbyterian Church to divest in three U.S. companies supplying Israel with equipment used in the West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded with an invitation to those organizations. He encouraged them to take a bus tour of Israel, the only democracy in the region, and then continue to Libya, Syria and Iraq. He included two pieces of advice for the latter portion of the visit: Use an armor-plated bus and hide your Christian identity.

BEYOND POLITICAL MESSIANISM by David Jacobson, Academic Studies Press, Brighton, Mass. 2011, 290 pages . Until I read this book, I confess that I had the same stereotype of those who live on the West Bank that most people do. I thought of them as religious fanatics who will not give up an inch of the Holy Land and who have no respect or concern for the Arabs who live there, or the realities of Israel's political isolation in the world....

The United Nations Security Council met yesterday to begin considering the request to grant a mostly symbolic recognition of a Palestinian state and full admission as a nation to the U.N. body. This effort, supported by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, is part of a new strategy by the Palestinians to force Israel to recognize a two-state solution within 1967 borders and to sidestep the present U.S. sponsored peace process formula. While Yassar Arafat unilaterally declared a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders in 1988 and won the recognition of over 100 nations at that time, present Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is now pressing for formal recognition by the U.N. To join the U.N. as a recognized nation-state, the Palestinians would have to first gain approval from nine out of the 15 nations sitting on the Security Council and then a two-thirds majority of the 193 nations comprising the international organization.

Miami Herald The seemingly endless conflict between Israeli and Palestinian forces over control of the West Bank is laden with political landmines and tragic violence. "Masked," an intense 1990 drama by Israeli playwright Ilan Hatsor, certainly draws much of its fuel from the way the first intifada plays out within a Palestinian family. But as GableStage's powerful new production of "Masked" so clearly demonstrates, the play owes as much to classic Greek tragedy as it does to the specific, more recent history that Hatsor considers.

JERUSALEM -- Ariel Sharon, Israel`s hawkish housing minister, has unveiled plans to increase the number of settler homes on the occupied West Bank, plans that contradict statements by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, who told the Bush administration that his government had not approved such proposals. During a tour of West Bank settlements, Sharon said that construction of 13,000 housing units had been approved for the next two years, Israeli newspapers reported on Friday. A senior aide to Shamir charged that it was an effort by Sharon "to embarrass Shamir and the United States."

The writer of a recent letter gave a version of events that is quite different from my investigations of Israel's recent history ("Waiting for Palestinians to take first step," Jan. 8). It is true the U.N. established a country with boundaries that would form Israel. It is true the Arabs attacked Israel, but Israel had already driven the Palestinians from parts of their land. He conveniently mentions Egypt took the Gaza territory and Jordan took Palestinian territories. What he did not mention was the U.N. did not mandate those territories to Israel; why was Israel occupying them?

By Jay Weaver and Diana Moskovitz, The Miami Herald, September 8, 2010

In Miami, of all places, a Palestinian national and a Cuban immigrant negotiated with undercover police officers last year to buy 300 high-powered firearms, explosives and remote-control detonators — a deadly weapons cache they said was destined for the West Bank, according to federal charges made public Tuesday. Abdalaziz Aziz Hamayel, who attended Hialeah Senior High, told a cop posing as a weapons dealer that the M16s, AK47s, grenades and other items "were for his people, and would be sent outside of the United States" to the Palestinian Authority, a criminal complaint states.

I am writing this during a cease fire in the battle between Israel and Hamas. My deadline is one week before you read this column. Obviously, much can change in the interim; however, no matter the ultimate outcome, we must discuss charges made by both sides against the other: does Hamas use women and children as shields; does Israel indiscriminately attack Hamas without regard to the lives of those same women and children? There is room for blame on both sides (which I will discuss in my next column on Aug. 20)

It would be awkward to talk about a moral high ground in a context such as the conflict in Israel and Gaza, where so many innocents are dying and so many more — on both sides — are in peril. The current clash, however, should be an eye-opener for those harrumphing outsiders who would hold Israel to nobler standards than they seem to expect of its enemies. Such people include — as an example — the Presbyterian Church (USA), whose convention voted narrowly last month to disinvest in three companies that do business with Israel.

A year ago, I wrote about Israel's Deputy Minister of Defense, Danny Danon, that he is Israel's "enemy within," perhaps the most dangerous current threat to Israel and a star of Likud, the linchpin of the governing coalition. My favorite Danon quotes: He refers to "the mistake we made in 1967 by failing to annex all of the West Bank. " As to the Palestinians who live in the West Bank, they "would not have the option to become Israeli citizens, therefore averting the threat to the Jewish and democratic status of Israel by a growing Palestinian population.

KARNEI SHOMRON, West Bank (JTA) — For the first time in two and a half weeks, my children did not ask, upon opening their eyes in the morning, "Has there been any news about Naftali, Gilad and Eyal?" They did not have to ask because last night our worst fears were confirmed with the announcement of the discovery of the teens' bodies in a shallow grave in a field north of Hebron. Actually, they were my worst fears. My children, at least the younger ones, believed throughout this ordeal that the teens would be found alive and returned to the warm embrace of their families.

Prime Minister Netanyahu's settler government has reached a parting of the ways with the United States. The United States will continue to advocate the two-state solution. It is the only way in which Israel and Palestine can live side by side in peace and prosperity. It is the only way in which Israel can maintain its Jewish and democratic values. The Palestine Authority, which has reconciled with Hamas, will continue to fight the occupation. The Israeli right-wing government will continue to announce the construction of Jewish settlements in its sections of Palestine that it intends to annex.

Just three and a half hours after being robbed, a TD Bank in unincorporated West Palm Beach was robbed again, according to the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. It all happened on June 4 when deputies said a man who appeared to be wearing a fake beard walked into the bank at 4646 Okeechobee Boulevard at about 2 p.m. The suspect handed a teller a note demanding money, then got away. The second robbery happened at about 5:30 p.m. when deputies said a woman walked into the bank, handed a teller a note demanding money, then got away.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — According to press reports, the crowd at a recent Republican Jewish Coalition conference "noticeably gasped" when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie referred to the West Bank as "occupied territories. " Christie promptly apologized to the event's host, mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, clarifying that his remarks "were not meant to be a statement of policy," according to a source. This incident illustrates the many semantic land mines involved in talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

QIRYAT ARBA, Israeli-occupied West Bank -- A Jewish settler, mistaking a copy of the Koran for a hand grenade, shot and seriously wounded a West Bank student, the army said Thursday. The incident occurred Wednesday night at Qiryat Arba, a Jewish settlement outside of Hebron, about 15 miles south of Jerusalem. "A guard at the entrance of Qiryat Arba noticed a suspicious figure that got closer to him. The figure was yelling abuse and held something in his hand that the guard thought was a grenade," an army spokesman said.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office is looking for a man who they said robbed a bank in West Boca. Deputies said at 11:22 a.m. on Tuesday, a man walked into the Bank of America in the 23100 block of State Road 7 and passed a note to the teller demanding money. The teller gave the man cash and he drove off in a black vehicle, possibly a Hyundai. Deputies are asking anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at 800-458-8477.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — According to press reports, the crowd at a recent Republican Jewish Coalition conference "noticeably gasped" when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie referred to the West Bank as "occupied territories. " Christie promptly apologized to the event's host, mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, clarifying that his remarks "were not meant to be a statement of policy," according to a source. This incident illustrates the many semantic land mines involved in talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.